Cultural institutions

The most notable of the country’s institutions are the National Library and the National Museum (both in Managua) and the Rubén Darío museum (in Ciudad Darío). The last is located in Darío’s childhood home, which became a national historical site and museum in 1943. The Julio Cortázar Museum of Contemporary Art in Managua opened in 1982. The Tenderí Museum in Masaya displays archaeological artifacts from the Chorotega people, as well as coins and medals from the Spanish colonial era. The Sandinistas established the Museum of the Revolution and the Museum of the Literacy Crusade in Managua, the Sandino Museum in Niquinohomo, and others. These subsequently were abandoned or fell into disarray after the change of government in 1990.

State-sponsored cultural production has declined sharply since the 1990s, and the country has relied on independent support of cultural activities, which take place predominantly in the capital, Managua. The Somoza regime valued elite (often imported) culture, while the Sandinistas promoted what they termed “democratizing, national, anti-imperialist” art forms, both professional and amateur. A Ministry of Culture was established under Cardenal, and a Sandinista Association of Cultural Workers was created and led by the poet Rosario Murillo, wife of revolutionary and political leader Daniel Ortega. Both organizations built museums, sponsored professional artists, and created popular workshops.

Sports and recreation

The most popular sport in Nicaragua is baseball, and baseball diamonds can be found throughout the country. Boxing has grown in popularity, largely in response to the success of Nicaraguan fighter Alexis Arguello. Other preferred sports include football (soccer), weightlifting, and swimming. Chess is another popular pastime. During the Sandinista regime the government made a particular effort to promote sports among women. Nicaragua made its first Olympic appearance in 1968 at the Mexico City Games.

Media and publishing

Nicaragua boasts a thriving publishing industry. The country has several daily newspapers, all of which have strong political orientations. A bitter foe of both the Somoza and the Sandinista governments, La Prensa (“The Press”) is staunchly conservative. El Nuevo Diario (“The New Daily”) and Barricada (“Barricade”; once the official FSLN organ) are pro-Sandinista. During the Somoza and Sandinista periods, the two existing television stations were both regime-controlled. Sandinista television attempted to diversify its international programming (previously dominated by U.S. offerings) and to increase domestically produced programs. After 1990, although many new channels appeared, much of the air time was dominated once again by U.S. programming. Throughout the second half of the 20th century and into the 21st, there were a variety of radio stations, most of them privately owned.

Early history

This discussion mainly focuses on the history of Nicaragua since the arrival of Columbus in the late 15th century. For treatment of earlier periods and of the country in its regional context, seeCentral America.

The Spanish soldier Pedro Arias Dávila (known as Pedrarias) led the first expedition to found permanent colonies in what is present-day Nicaragua. In 1519, when Pedrarias became the governor of Panama, he sent kinsman Gil González Dávila to explore northward toward Nicaragua. González Dávila made the first attempt to conquer the region in 1522 but was repulsed by Indians. Pedrarias then dispatched Francisco Hernández de Córdoba, who founded the cities of Granada and León; by 1524 he had established permanent colonization. Jealous of Hernández de Córdoba’s success, Pedrarias had him killed and named himself governor of Nicaragua in 1527. Pedrarias served as governor until his death in 1531.

Overall, the Spanish conquest was a disaster for the indigenous population of Nicaragua’s Pacific region. Within three decades an estimated Indian population of one million plummeted to a few tens of thousands, as approximately half the indigenous people died of contagious Old World diseases, and most of the rest were sold into slavery in other New World Spanish colonies. Few were killed in outright warfare.

After the initial depopulation, Nicaragua became a backwater of the Spanish empire. In this setting, Granada and León emerged as competing poles of power and prestige. The former derived its income from agriculture and trade with Spain via the San Juan River; the latter came to depend on commerce with the Spanish colonies of the Pacific coast. Both tiny outposts were subjected to frequent pirate attacks. Late in the 17th century, Great Britain formed an alliance with the Miskito people of the Caribbean coastal region, where the community of Bluefields had been established. The British settled on the Mosquito Coast, and for a time (1740–86) the region was a British dependency.

Independence

In 1811, inspired by struggles in Mexico and El Salvador, revolutionaries deposed the governing intendant of Nicaragua. León, however, soon returned to the royalist cause, and Granada bore the brunt of the punishment for disobedience. In 1821 León rejected and Granada approved the Guatemalan declaration of independence from Spain. Both accepted union with Mexico (1822–23), but they fought one another until 1826, when Nicaragua took up its role in the United Provinces of Central America. After Nicaragua seceded from the federation in 1838, the rivalry between León, which identified with the Liberal Party, and Granada, the centre of the Conservative Party, continued.

Foreign intervention

After the withdrawal of Spain, relations between the “king” of the Mosquito Coast and the British government strengthened until again there were British officials in Bluefields. In 1848 they seized the small Caribbean port of San Juan del Norte, renaming it Greytown. The discovery of gold in California drew attention to the strategic position of Nicaragua for interoceanic traffic, and Cornelius Vanderbilt’s Accessory Transit Company began a steamship and carriage operation between Greytown and the Pacific. In 1856 William Walker, an American who had been invited to assist the Liberals in warfare (1855), made himself president of the country, but he was routed a year later by the efforts of the five Central American republics and the transit company.

Conservatives ruled from 1857 until 1893, bringing relative peace but little democracy to Nicaragua. As a compromise between Granada and León, Managua was made the capital in 1857. In 1860 a treaty with Great Britain provided for the nominal reincorporation of the east coast with the rest of the country, but as an autonomous reservation. Complete jurisdiction over the Miskito people was not established until the Liberal presidency (1893–1909) of José Santos Zelaya.

Zelaya, though a dictator, was a committed nationalist. He promoted schemes for Central American reunification and refused to grant the United States transisthmian canal-building rights on concessionary terms, thus encouraging the United States to choose Panama for the project. This, plus rumours that Zelaya planned to invite Japan to construct a canal that would have competed with the U.S. waterway, caused the United States to encourage Zelaya’s Conservative opposition to stage a revolt. When two U.S. citizens who participated in the revolt were executed, the United States landed marines in Bluefields and thus blocked a Liberal victory. Although Zelaya resigned, the United States refused to recognize his successor, José Madriz (1909–10). Further civil war led to the presidency of a Conservative, Adolfo Díaz (1911–17), on whose behalf the U.S. Marines intervened in 1912. A 100-man guard at the U.S. embassy symbolized that country’s support also for Conservative presidents Emiliano Chamorro Vargas (1917–21) and his uncle Diego Manuel Chamorro (1921–23). The Bryan-Chamorro Treaty, signed in 1914 and ratified in 1916, gave the United States exclusive canal privileges in Nicaragua (to prevent a competing canal from being built) and the right to establish naval bases.

The U.S. Marine guard’s withdrawal in 1925 led quickly to another crisis, with Chamorro Vargas in rebellion against a new regime. Díaz returned as a compromise president (1926–28), reinforced in 1927 by 2,000 U.S. Marines. Liberal leaders Juan Bautista Sacasa, José María Moncada, and Augusto César Sandino rose in rebellion, but after six months Sacasa and Moncada made peace, and subsequent elections under U.S. auspices brought the presidency to both of them (Moncada, 1928–33, and Sacasa, 1933–36). Sandino, however, fought on as long as the Marines remained in the country.

The Somoza years

The Marines withdrew upon the inauguration of Sacasa, and Sandino submitted to his government. A Nicaraguan National Guard, trained by the U.S. Marines and commanded by Gen. Anastasio Somoza García, was now responsible for maintaining order in the country. In 1934 high-ranking officers led by Somoza met and agreed to the assassination of Sandino. Somoza then deposed Sacasa with the support of factions of both Liberals and Conservatives, and in a rigged election he became president on January 1, 1937.

Somoza (known as Tacho) revised the constitution to facilitate the consolidation of power into his own hands and ruled the country for the next two decades, either as president or as the power behind puppet presidents. Export activities grew from the 1930s onward. However, the Somoza family and their associates, rather than the Nicaraguan people as a whole, were the main beneficiaries of the country’s income.

On September 21, 1956, a day after Somoza’s Nationalist Liberal Party of Nicaragua (Partido Liberal Nacionalista de Nicaragua; PLN) had nominated him for another term, a Liberal poet named Rigoberto López Pérez shot the president, who died eight days later. Congress at once gave Luis Somoza Debayle his father’s position, and in February 1957 he was dubiously elected to his own term (1957–63). Somoza Debayle ruled more gently than his father had. He accepted a settlement in favour of Honduras of a long-standing border dispute between the two countries (1960) and cooperated with the United States in the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba (1961). In 1961 three Marxists, including Carlos Fonseca Amador, founded the guerrilla Sandinista National Liberation Front (Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional; FSLN) in opposition to the regime. It was named for Augusto César Sandino, and its members are called Sandinistas.

Following an essentially uncontested election in 1963, two puppet presidents, René Schick Gutiérrez and, upon his death in 1966, Lorenzo Guerrero Gutiérrez, held office with the support of the Somozas. Although the economy grew, mass poverty remained unchanged. Luis Somoza died early in 1967. Months later his brother Anastasio Somoza Debayle (“Tachito”) won yet another rigged presidential election against a token opponent, Fernando Agüero Rocha. In 1970 the Bryan-Chamorro Treaty was abrogated.

On May 1, 1972, constitutionally ineligible to succeed himself, Somoza relinquished the presidency to a triumvirate (composed of Agüero and two leaders of Somoza’s own party). On December 23 an earthquake in the city of Managua left 6,000 persons dead and 300,000 homeless. Somoza (commanding the National Guard) took charge as the head of a National Emergency Committee. Agüero, who protested, found himself replaced (March 1, 1973) on the triumvirate. The population suffered from the destruction as Somoza and his friends profited privately from international aid programs. In March 1974 a new constitution (the country’s eighth since 1838) made it possible for Somoza to be reelected president.

Before the end of the year, two genuine opposition groups attracted wide attention—the Sandinistas and the organization founded by Pedro Joaquín Chamorro, editor and publisher of La Prensa (“The Press”) of Managua, called the Democratic Union of Liberation (Unión Democrática de Liberación; UDEL). In December 1974 the Sandinistas staged a successful kidnapping of Somoza elites, for which ransom and the release of political prisoners were obtained. In response, the regime embarked on a two-and-a-half-year counterinsurgency effort that, in addition to leading to the death of Carlos Fonseca in 1976, took the lives of thousands of peasant noncombatants. In 1977 a group called Los Doce (The Twelve) sought an anti-Somoza alliance to include UDEL, the Sandinistas, and other organizations. Assassins murdered Pedro Joaquín Chamorro on January 10, 1978, and a general strike and violence followed. On August 22 the Sandinistas occupied the national palace, holding more than 1,000 hostages for two days and winning most of their demands. Although the National Guard regained partial control, the insurrection spread, with another general strike and the Sandinistas seizing and holding several major cities. The uprising was eventually quashed, at the cost of several thousand lives. The following June the FSLN staged its final offensive. City after city fell to the insurgents, backed by tens of thousands of local civilian combatants. On July 17 Somoza resigned and fled the country; two days later the Sandinistas entered Managua and accepted the surrender of what was left of his army, ending the long years of Somoza rule.